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The Ghoti Bangal tussle: Chingri (Prawn) Malai Curry Recipe

I normally give instructions to our maid Banu on what to cook on phone from office. I don't really peer over her shoulders as she cooks, like our mothers do, when I am home. I happened to be home yesterday and asked her to make chingrimalai curry. I never tell her the name of the recipe. My trade secret. Well she started and I suddenly realised that she'd been frying the prawns for a good five minutes. I ran to the kitchen and screamed. Then asked her to put oil for the curry in the pan. Saw the liberal amount that she put and screamed again. Then asked her to add the onion paste. She did so without covering the pan. A cloud of smoke came out. I screamed again. Covered it. And then proceeded to cook the dish myself! Feminine guile anyone?Here's my cooking video for chingri malai curry

Prawn Malai Curry

Prawn malai curry, along with KoshaMangshoand BhaapaEelish, forms the troika of the most regal of Bengali dishes. The first two would be the dishes which define a 'BiyeBarirBhoj' or Bengali wedding feast. Bhaapa mach, or fish steamed in mustard sauce, is a more ethereal dish best enjoyed with RabindraSangeet and steamed rice.

Prawn Malai Curry is a dish from the 'Ghoti' repertoire. Ghotis are Bengalis from West Bengal or the Indian side of pre-partition Bengal. Bangals form the other strain of Bengalis. They come from East Bengal. What is now known as Bangladesh.

The GhotiBangal rivalry used to be best exemplified by the MohunBagan (Ghoti) East Bengal (Bangal) football match. If East Bengal won then the prices of Hilsa would go up as Bangals would make curries of their favoured fish to celebrate. If MohunBagan won then the prices of prawns would go up as the Ghotis would celebrate over malai curry.

'Malai' stands for coconut milk here. Unlike in coconut milk loving South India, this is one of the rare dishes where coconut milk is used in Bengali cooking

Another legend has it that malai stands for Malay and the dish was brought back ny Bengali immigrants to Malaysia during the British rule.

For the records, I am a Bangal. Malai curry was never cooked at our place while I was growing up. But I fell prey to the charms of malai curry once I had it. As did everyone I have treated it to at Oh Calcutta. My non Bengali colleagues. My Parsi in laws. Everybody loves chingrimalai curry.

Here's my recipe for the same

Prep

Take 250 g of prawns. Important to get the shop keeper to devein it if fresh. Or buy frozen deveined frozen prawns. Deveining prawns yourself is back breaking

Smear the prawns with a bit of turmeric and salt

Fry them in hot oil for not more than two minutes. You want the fishy smell to go but you don't want the prawns to overcook and become tough

Curry

Take a tablespoon of oil in a saucepan and heat it

Put in some whole garammasala (3,4 pieces each of cardamom, Cinnamon bits and cloves), a couple of bay leaves and a couple of dry red chillies

Wait till these splutter and the aroma of the masala comes out

Add in a paste of one onion. Stir and cover with a lid as a lot of steam will come out

Add a tablespoon of ginger paste once the onion begins to brown and stir

Comments

This is a great recipe and definitely one I shall be trying. Thank you. My own family was split. My grandmother was from the East, my Grandfather from Calcutta. I liked the simplicity of the Calcuttan bengali food and I really enjoyed my meal at Oh Calcutta when I was last in the city. It will be time to head back to India soon, I think.

Hey Simon, I was over the moon when Ganguly lead the Kolkata Knightriders to a victory. And went back again when I read your comment.

Must warn you that this is my version of the recipe and not the way Sharatchandra would have approved of it. Did you know that 'Oh Calcutta' is originally from Aamchi (our) Mumbai? LOL as your friend in Kl would have said.

All the best Harman, remember the caveat though :)

Miri, true. That's why I love Thai curries

Somoo (HCOF) amazing isn't it? Some of the most 'exotic' of dishes are actually so simple to make

That sounds very intersting - I must try out this recipe. The combination of the garam masala and coconut milk is unusual...for me only (more used to the Goan style of prawn curries).I love the description of the cooking process and the small screams in the kitchen! Ha ha, good thing you won't be there to see me cooking it....I might get it totally wrong! :)

I made this. It turned out to be great.I used to make prawns curry with coconut milk earlier too but I would be apprehensive about using more than 100ml. I used all of 200ml this time around and the creamy curry won hearts immediately.

The writer says she is a Bangal, but she has never seen chingrir malaikari being prepared at her home. This is strange. My point is not whether this dish was the brain child of Ghotis or Bangals. But it can be vouched that chingrir malaikari has been a very common, popular dish in East Bengala for a very long time. Though I was born in this part of Bengal, I had the taste of this dish, which was often prepared by my mother or my maternal grand mother (she was born 125 years ago) and both of them were from the erstwhile east bengal, now Bangladesh. In their home in the olden time, prawns and spices were stuffed into the two broken parts of a coconut. The two parts were rejoined by applying a layer of mud before that treasured coconut was placed in the low heat of an earthen oven (unun) and after an hour or so, there was a heaven inside it. Coconuts being available in abundance in east bengal (perhaps not less than in Kerala), the use of it was lavish in that part of Bengal.

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